Skullcandy Aviator 900 ANC: Old School Rock & Roll Meets Modern Hi-Fi - ABP Live English

Skullcandy Aviator 900 ANC Review: There was a time when headphones were primarily about one thing: making music come out of two things strapped to your head. Then came ANC. Then spatial audio. Then head tracking. Then apps. Then AI. At this point, I'm half expecting headphones to start filing my income tax returns.

Skullcandy's Aviator 900 ANC is very much a product of that evolution. It comes with premium adaptive noise cancellation, THX Spatial Audio with head tracking, 40mm drivers, Personal Sound by Mimi, 60 hours of battery life and enough customisation options to make your listening habits feel like a small software project.

But there's something else here that the specification sheet doesn't quite capture. The Aviator 900 ANC looks extremely Skullcandy. The transparent earcups, retro-inspired styling and that rather gorgeous roll-top travel pouch give it a personality that most headphones in this price bracket seem to have misplaced somewhere between "minimalist" and "boring". 

Naturally, ABP Live's excitable AI review bot, GennieGPT, has already opened the spec sheet. Let's see what she makes of it.

✨ GennieGPT: THX Spatial Audio with Head Tracking! 360-degree soundscapes! The sound moves with your head! You're basically inside the music!

Shayak: The spatial audio isn't just a checkbox feature here. The Aviator 900 ANC can create a wider, more immersive presentation, and the head-tracking element adds another layer to that effect. But here's the thing: spatial audio isn't automatically better audio.

Sometimes you want to feel like you're sitting in the middle of an orchestra. Sometimes you just want the singer to sound like they're standing directly in front of you instead of somewhere in another dimension.

And for me, the genuinely impressive part of these headphones isn't the 360-degree marketing terminology. It's the soundscape itself.

The distinction between instruments is excellent. Listen to a properly recorded classical arrangement on a lossless source and you can actually pick apart the different sections of the composition rather than getting one giant blob of sound.

Strings, percussion, woodwinds... there's a sense of separation that makes the Aviator 900 ANC particularly enjoyable for more complex arrangements. That's the sort of improvement you notice without needing an app to tell you you're supposed to notice it.

✨ GennieGPT: 40mm drivers! 20Hz to 20kHz frequency response! 36-ohm impedance! THD below 1%! This is AUDIO PERFECTION!

Shayak: The 40mm drivers are perfectly respectable, but the specification sheet doesn't tell you how a pair of headphones actually sounds. Frequency response ranges certainly don't tell the entire story either. The good news is that the Aviator 900 ANC doesn't need the numbers to make its case.

The sound is genuinely detailed, with particularly good separation between instruments. That's where these headphones feel more premium than the average pair of ANC cans.

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✨ GennieGPT: Premium six-mic adaptive ANC! Adjustable Stay-Aware Mode! Clear Voice Smart Mic! Natural Voice Sidetone! Calls will sound like you're sitting next to the person!

Shayak: You're getting dangerously close to being useful. The ANC is one of the stronger parts of the Aviator 900 ANC experience, and it's particularly impressive during calls.

The little silver scroller wheel on the cup is a great way to control ANC modes, you swipe up to get incremental cancellations, you swipe down to reduce ANC. Very simple, very Skullcandy. 

The six-microphone system gives the headphones plenty of hardware to work with, while adaptive noise cancellation adjusts to the surrounding environment rather than simply applying one fixed level of noise reduction.

The practical difference is simple: you don't have to shout over the world around you. That's particularly useful when taking calls in noisy environments. Stay-Aware mode is also useful when you actually need to hear what's happening around you without taking the headphones off. Because, believe it or not, sometimes the person talking to you isn't part of the Spotify playlist.

✨ GennieGPT: Retro-inspired design! Transparent earcaps! Premium finish! Flat-folding design! Fashionable roll-top travel bag! ICONIC!

Shayak: The Aviator 900 ANC looks like a Skullcandy product. And I mean that as the finest compliment.

There are plenty of premium headphones that have converged into the same design language: black, grey, smooth curves, minimalist logos and an overwhelming desire to disappear into your furniture. Skullcandy has never really been interested in that.

The transparent earcups look particularly good, and the overall retro aesthetic gives the Aviator 900 ANC some personality.

Even the carry pouch deserves attention. It's not one of those forgettable black fabric cases that exists purely because someone in the packaging department was told a case had to be included. The roll-top travel bag actually looks fashionable.

✨ GennieGPT: And they're flat-folding and collapsible! Maximum portability!

Shayak: Within reason. At 332 grams, these aren't exactly featherweights. You know you're wearing a substantial pair of headphones. But that weight doesn't become a deal-breaker for me because the headphones otherwise feel deliberately designed as a premium over-ear product.

And honestly, if you wanted something tiny, you wouldn't be shopping for over-ear headphones in the first place.

✨ GennieGPT: SIXTY HOURS! With ANC off! FORTY HOURS with ANC on! Ten minutes of charging gives you four hours! Your charger will become unemployed!

Shayak: That's one prediction I wouldn't mind seeing come true. The battery numbers are genuinely strong. You get up to 60 hours with ANC turned off and 40 hours with ANC on, which means even heavy users shouldn't be hunting for a charger every other day.

The rapid charging is arguably even more useful in real life: 10 minutes gets you up to four hours of playback.

That's the sort of feature that sounds boring on a specification sheet and becomes incredibly useful the first time you're leaving the house with a dying battery.

There’s also USB-C charging, naturally. No proprietary nonsense. Good.

✨ GennieGPT: Wait! There's a DISPLAY on the earcup! It can show battery levels and modes! A HEADPHONE WITH A SCREEN! WE HAVE REACHED THE FUTURE!

Shayak: This is probably the one feature where I genuinely don't understand the assignment. The little display on the earcup can show battery information and modes, but I'm not convinced it's particularly necessary.

You already have the Skullcandy app, which has clear voice signals to let you know which mode you are on. You have controls on the headphones. You have your phone. Adding a tiny display to the earcup feels a little like putting a dashboard on a toaster.

It looks cool. It is unmistakably Skullcandy. But I wouldn't have missed it if it wasn't there.

And that's actually my biggest criticism of the Aviator 900 ANC. Not because it's bad. Because almost everything else makes sense.

✨ GennieGPT: Skullcandy App! Custom EQ! Bass Boost! Podcast Mode! Personal Sound by Mimi! Custom buttons! Spotify Tap! Multipoint! Google Fast Pair! FINDER!

Shayak: There are a lot of features here, but thankfully, most of them aren't completely pointless. Personal Sound by Mimi lets you create a personalised sound profile, while the app gives you access to EQ settings and presets depending on what you're listening to.

Multipoint pairing is particularly handy if you jump between a laptop and phone throughout the day.

Wear detection is another one of those small quality-of-life features that you stop noticing once it works properly, which is exactly how these features should be. Then there's Spotify Tap, custom button functions and Google Fast Pair.

None of these individually revolutionise headphones. Together, though, they make the Aviator 900 ANC feel like a properly thought-out premium product rather than a pair of expensive speakers attached to your head.

The Skullcandy Aviator 900 ANC is an interesting pair of headphones because the specification sheet is impressive, but the actual listening experience is what ultimately sells them. 

The 60-hour battery is great. The 40-hour ANC battery figure is great. The six-mic adaptive ANC is genuinely useful. The THX Spatial Audio is fun. The app has plenty of customisation. But the thing I kept coming back to was the sound.

The separation between instruments is genuinely impressive, particularly with classical arrangements and lossless audio. You can hear the composition breathe rather than simply hearing everything arrive at once.

And then there's the design. These don't look like headphones designed by a committee whose only instruction was "make them premium". They look like Skullcandy. The transparent earcups, retro styling and fashionable travel pouch all contribute to that.

At Rs 22,999, you're firmly in premium headphone territory, so there are plenty of alternatives to consider. But the Aviator 900 ANC makes a convincing argument for itself by combining serious sound with serious personality.

Should You Buy Skullcandy Aviator 900 ANC?

The headphones feature genuinely impressive adaptive noise cancellation, particularly effective during calls. Its six-microphone system adjusts to the environment, allowing clear communication even in noisy settings.

Shayak Majumder leads the ABP Live English team. He reviews gadgets, covers everything AI, and is on the lookout for the next big tech trend to cover. He is also building a data-driven AI-aware newsroom. Got tips? Reach out!

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